


The Jasmine Umbrella

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Series: Fence Sitter [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Family Issues, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, teenage sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 00:42:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8230325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: Chapter 6: Fence SitterHigh school Micah's home life is awful and he's seeking avenues to escape it.In the meantime, Micah meets Danny, who likes him but wants nothing to do with romance.





	1. Chapter 1

“Let me guess…” The cute guy leaned forward on his elbows, hands clasped together, forearms laid flat on the carved up wooden counter. This posture meant that he also jutted out his barely jeaned ass so the back pocket that had torn clean through and exposed his tight, kelly green underwear, was perfectly visible to me in the tilted mirror hanging from the ceiling behind him. “Are you going to get a medium mocha with a double shot and extra chocolate with a fresh strip of orange or are you going to cave to the evening with a pot of rooibos tea?”

“How do you know I don’t want something else?” It was a feint to cover up my interest and (I hoped) a sign to him that I might be both effortless and worldly. Which was such a joke because I was totally preening under his attention. And I was so flirting back and utterly failing to be cool about any of it.

It was now half-past one on Sunday morning. The last customer besides me just walked out the door. I’d been here since just past dinnertime on Saturday night and the guy behind the counter and I have spent the last few hours getting caught out when we stared at each other. 

“Maybe,” I hedged, and jerked my chin to the place over his shoulder where the coffee machine burped out something steamy and tangy and vaguely like tobacco, “I’ll want a cup of _that_ since it’s almost done.”

“Okay,” he allowed. And then clarified, “I know you don’t. But okay.”

“How do you know?”

“Because _that,_ my lovely customer, is an exceptional and acquired taste, not meant for people with a sweet tooth.”

Oh, man. He knew I had a sweet-tooth.

That meant he’d paid attention. We might have been looking at each other all night (though I’d been looking at him for …I dunno…a lot of weeks or maybe months), but there was a difference between getting checked out and someone who was educated on my preferences. Still, I couldn’t let him think I was easy or anything. I equivocated, “I could surprise you.”

“Doubtful but I’ll bite. To be honest, I didn’t take you for a guy who would take the risk.”

“Don’t I?”

“No.”

“Like I said, I could surprise you.”

I tore my glance away from his ass and caught my own appearance. My hair was disheveled and long overdue for a cut. My striped t-shirt was misshapen and worn thin. I could feel how my vintage (okay, they were my dad’s) checkered Vans had holes at the tips of both big toes. But there was something else there, too: a spark of nerve. One that I hadn’t felt in a long time and I think it looked good on me.

“Tell you what,” he said. I think he winked but maybe he just squinted then he stood straight up again, ready to talk business. “Just for that, I’m going to serve you up a cup and we can see whether or not I’m right. Which, you know I am.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.” He became light and adorable and kind of twinkly, though that last part may have something to do with the jittery feeling on my end that went beyond the effects of the copious amounts of caffeine pumped into my body throughout the course of the day.

“Here’s how it’s gonna happen,” he prodded, never taking his deep, dark gaze (Was it blue? It might be blue. It might be dark brown. Stupid lights.) from mine. He said, “I will give you a sample and if you like it, I will buy you a cup.”

That didn’t sound so bad. Then he went on, “But if you don’t, you are going to whisk me away into that room right over there [and he pointed to the open door with shelves of chocolate syrup and stacks of brown trifold paper towels] and blow me.”

He just said that out loud.

I looked around and, nope, there wasn’t anyone there to hear him. But still, holy shit, he just said that out loud. I stood there with my jaw hanging down for I don’t know how long before he reached over with his index finger to gently push it shut. Which was also… _ngh_.

“That’s …pretty brazen,” I charged.

“No. Just practical.” He dared me by throwing up a single eyebrow in a perfect arch and nonchalantly resumed his explanation, “See, if I’m right, this coffee is going to throw you into a state of dyspepsia that you are wholly unprepared for. I’m just making sure you understand how to get to the antidote.”

“So, you’re saying…”

“…Nectar of the Gods.”

Jesus, he was cute. And a bit way out there. Still, _Nectar of the Gods_? He couldn’t be serious. I should back down. I should say no. I should, I should, I shouldn’t say, “Okay.”

His nostrils flared briefly when I agreed and he tucked his lips between his teeth. Was he laughing at me or was he hot for me? I really couldn’t tell.

Oh, but then he had to get all dramatic and deliberate when he steamed the ceramic mug. He held it like it was some fine bone china that would be used to serve a president or something. Then, he poured a small amount of the menacing concoction which, now that it was out of the pot, was more foul-smelling than I had anticipated.

The smell alone churned my stomach.

He held the cup in both hands, extended his arms, and delivered his offering to me while not at all hiding that he was about to bust a gut laughing at what he thought would be my inevitable demise.

I asked, “You really like this stuff?”

“Stop procrastinating,” he teased, and he reached back to grab a small paper espresso cup, poured himself a sample from what I _thought_ was the same pot but couldn’t be sure since me moved the carafe in question over to where three other ones were. He tossed the drink back easily and donned an evil grin, “Your turn.”

I took a sip.

It was vile and acerbic. I cleared out the air channel between the back of my nose and my gullet. Yet, I smiled prettily. Enthusiastically even. “Mmmm. Delicious.”

I tried to take another sip without my face going into a spasm of discontent. This coffee blend, whatever the hell it was, sucked.

He flat out laughed at me and skipped the part where he was supposed to say, _I told you so_ , and instead, meandered to the front door of the coffee shop. And locked it.

He was, apparently, not at all worried about the possibility that someone might stumble by in desperate need for a fix only to discover the last place to get good coffee at this hour had shut early. 

“You lost. You can’t even fake your way out of it so stop pretending.”

Then he grabbed my hand and led me to the storage room. I’m not exactly sure how he did it since my feet had turned to lead in the time it took between him handing me the coffee and him locking the door.

When we got inside, shielded from the outside world, he leaned back on one of the shelves, wantonly and ready for me to do my thing.

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm. Bring it.”

I hadn’t done this too many times in the past and I suspected that the blow jobs I received were better than the ones I had given. But in all cases, it had been with someone I knew and there had been kissing involved.

It didn’t look as if he had any intention of making out. He wanted a blowjob. Pure and simple. It was a thing he won so I had to do it. And I wanted to do it anyway, but now I had to, and oh my god.

I was so nervous.

Crap, I really was.

I noticed that he wasn’t wearing a belt, which is why his pants hung low enough for me to see those two dimples on his lower back earlier. I found the nerve to approach him. I popped the button of his jeans and undid his fly and pulled down his pants to expose his underwear.

Confession.

I had a thing for underwear.

These were no exception.

They were a second skin in bright green and they made the skin around them look ridiculously and beautifully tactile.

I felt him up. I cupped him and hoped he didn’t notice my shaking. He was not even half-hard. This was okay since I liked the feeling of how he grew to take up more and more of my hand.

“So this is for real, right? I mean, you really want me to and I’m really doing this?”

He placed his hands on my shoulders and pressed me down. “I really want you to and you’re really doing this.”

I got down on one knee and perched on the heel of my boot. I leaned forward and after looking up one more time, I moved in and mouthed at the fabric. His erection grew sideways and his balls grew plump. I peeled down the black waistband carefully so as not to stretch the cotton out of shape (because that would be _such_ a waste of hot underwear) and pushed them down until they rested at the crook of his knees.

Some guys I know — oh, and some girls, too — talked about the size and shape and, to a lesser degree, the taste and scent of guys they had been with. All those things are great but the thing that no one talks about much, and it’s a thing that got me going, was how their coloring work together. For example, I saw these pictures of guys who are all one smooth color and then their dick and balls are darker or pinker like what they had was some forbidden fruit.

That’s…okay…yeah…it’s just a thing I like.

And it doesn’t have to be all one different color or all a different-different color all around a guy’s bits. This guy, for example, has a pink tip, a lighter pink shaft and light brown balls — like stripes in a new box of Neapolitan ice cream that had been opened on the long side of the box. It called out my dilemma about whether to taste each part separately or whether to run my tongue across the entire lot of him. So I did what any normal person would do in my situation: First one and then the other. In other words: both. Just not at the same time. More like…sequentially.

Very quickly, my brain fried. I couldn’t think of what to do. I couldn’t even think of what I liked. I was on the verge of panicking when a memory arose about a recent and surreptitious trip across the border with a few friends. We learned how to drink tequila and the instructions were simple: lick, suck, and swallow.

Crude? Yes.

But it was also effective.

Especially when no brain.

I wanted to confess to him that I didn’t really know what I was doing. That with two notable exceptions, my knowledge derived from oft repeated readings of my mom’s Cosmo collection. In the end, I didn’t confess because he seemed to like what I was doing and some part of me thought, _hot, wet mouth on dick…how bad could it be?_

I knew he had said something and, in retrospect, it was most likely a warning. But I only half-listened. Not because he wasn’t important. It’s just that I have never mastered the art of concentrating on a thing while also being a participant of communication. Even if I was just on the listening end.

Needless to say, I was surprised when my mouth went from being full to bursting with full. And this left me with such profound thoughts as _oh shit_ and _swallow_ and _can’t breathe_ and _don’t choke_ and _don’t snort_ and _keep swallowing._

Fortunately, that small emergency — and the panic that almost accompanied it — passed.

I slid off him and, in trying to be both courteous and neat, I brought with me as much wetness as possible and eventually released him from my mouth.

He pulled up his pants. I looked down before he finished zipping back up. “Hey,” he said. “I can’t believe…”

I can’t believe that just happened.

I stood up and was a little awkward doing it. But, quite frankly, the entire scene had moved straight into being a little awkward.

“I’ve never done that before,” I blurted.

I’d interrupted him, self-conscious of having moved past being shocked by my actions, and into a haze of intoxication that was at least two parts sex and one part achievement. That thing I just did may have been a tenuous accomplishment but it was a landmark one. It was probably as important as taking a first step or starting school or riding a bike or any one of a number of things that isn’t exactly out of reach for the general population.

I didn’t even know his name. I’d seen him here for weeks but we hadn’t exactly been having any life changing conversations. What did I say now? _That was great coffee guy, I like your dick?_

He deadpanned, “You’ve never given head before?”

I wasn’t sure he was surprised or not and what that meant about my performance. Maybe it wasn’t good? “No…I mean…yes. I have. Just not with anyone I didn’t know.”

“Ah.”

“And never somewhere so almost public.”

“Almost public?”

“Yeah, like all this chocolate syrup is going to go in drinks made here and…um…I’m going to be all two degrees of separation from anyone who orders one of them.”

Coffee guy was amused, “Is that so?” 

Was that stupid for me to say? That was totally stupid to say. And now I don’t have anything else to say so I’m just standing here looking back and forth between him and the door feeling uncomfortable.

“Well, Mr. I’ve Never Done That Before…do you have a name?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s Micah.”

“Danny.”

He was smiling at me again. This time, it was in some all-knowing cool way that was simultaneously hotly amused with undercurrents of carnal knowledge and, oh man I need to stop.

The thing is, though, that I’ve never quite been able to pull that look off. What does he mean when he smiles at me like that?

And wait. There was something else that I needed to ask. “So…like are you going to tell me what that coffee was so I know to never order it again?”

An awkward snort-guffaw-sneeze thing blasted out of face and he covered his mouth as he mumbled out something that may have been an apology. “I’m sorry, it isn’t funny, I swear,” he squeaked before erupting into a fit of giggles.

“What?” I queried, certain all of a sudden that I’d been had. Fuck. I couldn’t look at him anymore.

“Don’t hate me, okay? I just…I didn’t think you’d fall for it,” he paused, wet-eyed, but with his breath a little calmer. He cleared his throat and told me, “That wasn’t _actually_ coffee.”

I glared at him blankly and I didn’t say a word.

“I was just cleaning the machine with a lemon juice mix and had it dripping into a brew I made a few hours ago.”

I did more glaring and more not saying of words.

“I thought it was so obvious. I mean, it smelled horrid and since you were here all the time and I thought that for sure you wouldn’t …” and then he changed tactics and got a little more agro about it all, “You know what? I’m sorry [he was totally not sorry] but you should have trusted me. I knew what you liked and I’ve never steered you wrong before and it’s not like it was going to hurt you.”

“It was shitty.”

“It was a little bit shitty,” he conceded and waited a tick before he threw up his arms and rolled his eyes at me. “Come on, Micah. It was at least a little bit funny.”

“What was?” I complained, “Tricking me into giving you a blowjob and then pointing out how stupid I was?”

“No. You’re not stupid and as for the other part, it wasn’t that bad, was it? I mean, there are worse things.”

I had nothing to say to that.

God, how could this turn around so quickly? It was like I had just found this little space away from everything and everyone. I could get a new start and already it’s gone all sour. I stormed out of that stupid little room and shouted, “Fuck you,” into the air and hoped that the sound landed with vitriol into his fucked up consciousness where it would sit and stew and hopefully render him into a more decent human being.

Maybe.

Eventually.

“Wait…wait…C’mon don’t be like that,” he half laughed and half chastised while he chased after me to the table where I had been sitting for hours earlier that evening. I gathered up my papers and books with as much dignity as I could muster and zipped up my bag only to find that he blocked my exit.

I’d go left, he’d go left. I’d go right, he’d go right. And there was only a three foot aisle way leading between here and the door so it wasn’t like I had much getting around him unless I wanted to be violent or something (and I didn’t).

“Please, Micah, stop,” he held his hands up, finally contrite, though still annoyingly amused. “I didn’t mean to trick you. I thought you wanted that to happen, you know?”

Danny stepped closer, slid his hand along the side of mine and stuck his bottom lip out, “I _could_ return the favor. You know. To make it up to you. If you wanted me to, that is.” Then he tugged at me and I didn’t move.

He pulled a little bit harder and made sad little doe eyes to show me that he was really sorry. I huffed and pursed my lips and made sure to look at anywhere that wasn’t him. He pulled harder still until one of my feet stepped in front of the other until we made it back into the little room I had just stormed out of. There, he eased my bag off my shoulder and placed it gently on the floor, and then he pressed himself against me.

It was sweet, the way he tilted his head up to kiss me, in a way that was nice and gentle and apologetic. He was so close to me. He cupped his hands around my jaw and looked so deeply into my eyes that my stomach hurt. He said, “You are a beautiful and gullible man, Micah. I am sorry I made you feel bad,” he kissed me again and unbuckled my belt. The metal bits of it clanked against the metal buttons of my jeans as he eased all of it - my belt, my pants, my underwear - to my ankles as he kneeled gracefully, to both knees. “So to make it up to you, I’m going to make you feel good.”

He took me confidently in his hand and kept his eyes glued to mine me while he grazed, with very edges of his lips, around the tip and slit and swell of my dick. Then he proceeded to blow me as if it were not only the most important thing he would do today but possibly the most important thing he would do in, like, ever.

Danny did this thing where he got me sopping wet with his spit and pretended like my dick was a tube of lipstick made to run all over his lips. The whole time he did it, he gave me this devilish look, like he knew he was turning my world inside out. That may have been hotter than what he was actually doing.

And wasn’t that enlightening?

It was thing after thing after thing with him. Everything mind boggling. Everything confident. Everything so, so, so, so good. I decided right there an then to never again be satisfied with my insufficient trio oftequila-drinking moves. Not when I knew _this_ was possible.

He moved his hand down and pinned my balls to the tops of my thighs, and slipped me through the soft pucker of his lips.

One. Slow. Inch. At. A. Time.

When he got to where he wanted to be, he sucked hard, which made his cheeks cave in, and he swallowed and not because he needed to and — holy shit — the feeling of it was a freaking gift. It was this unbelievable sensation that kind of shouldn’t have been possible but now that I knew that it was, I was a little afraid for my future because I didn’t think I would ever want to spend my time doing anything other than getting sucked off by this guy on his knees right in front of me, who happens to go by the name of Danny.

My hips keened forward. My hands slipped along the concrete wall behind me seeking purchase even as the concrete floor below me turned to quicksand. Was it the floor?Maybe it was just my knees. I didn’t know. I couldn’t even tell anymore.

And the sounds coming out of me were, quite frankly wretched. There was none of this porn star “oooh” or “aaah” or even some profoundly advanced phrasing of curse words.

Nope.

The sounds coming out of me consisted of a high pitched squeal that emanated from a vibration from the top of my hard pallet as harmonized with heavy, erratic, helpless breathing and the occasional syllable like “ngh” or “wh…” Because, who knows?While he was busy sucking my brains out through the hole of my dick, I might have had an urgent need to tell him how much my mother liked _ngh_ -avel oranges or _wh_ -alnut whips when she was little.

I thought about how he tried to give me a warning and how I ought to return the favor so I did. I was just on the edge of letting loose when an unbidden thought settled into my consciousness.

I imagined myself in a certain flying house in the middle of a certain twister, watching things that flew by —grannies in rocking chairs, cows, mean ladies on bicycles… gallon-sized jugs of Hershey’s syrup. Then came the long, spinning descent down, down, down, down, dizzy and weightless, only to land with a jolt and in this new location where there was only the complete silence of the world having stopped for a moment before a door opened to a new world. This one in glorious Technicolor with an accompanying soundtrack of sickly sweet symphonies.

I slid down the wall, landing bare-assed on black non-slip kitchen mats and looked at Danny, who was, as far as I could tell through my heavily glazed eyes, now crouched and balanced on the balls of his feet.

“That should be illegal,” I declared, slack-jawed, with every one of my cells depleted and catatonic. “That was…,” and finally I got up the nerve to ask him what I was really going to ask him when I approached the counterafter the last customer (the one that wasn’t me) left at half-past one, “Danny…will you go out with me?”

At first, I thought that he thought that I was obtuse. Then his lips twitched and his head dipped coyly to one side. It occurred to me that he thought the only reason I had asked this at this time was because my mind wasn’t yet functioning fully. My cheeks pinked up due to my — what turned out to be correct — premonition that he wasn’t going to say yes. “Micah,” he purred, “I don’t do the boyfriend thing.”

There it was.

“What does that even mean to not _do_ the boyfriend thing? Like you don’t date or you’re not romantic or you don’t believe in love or you don’t cuddle or…”

Danny brushed a hand through his hair, straightened the rest of himself out, and offered me his other hand to help me up. “Love messes up the good things. I kinda need to keep my good things good right now. That’s what I mean.”

“Okay?” It came out like Oak-heeey and I didn’t mean to be snide or defensive or anything but the only time I’ve ever heard that line being used on anyone is when one person really isn’t interested in the other. And that’s kind of hard to take when your balls are still hanging out.

But it was okay. I could handle it. I could recover. No problem. It was fine. I was cool.

“You should probably put your pants on. I still have to clean up for the night.”

“Need help?” Right here was proof that I was astoundingly cool.

He gave me the disbelieving side eye.

“Platonic,” I huffed, “The no expectations, friends-only-just-keeping-you-company-so-you-don’t-have-to-stay-all-night sort of help.”

“Oh? Well, why didn’t you say so?”

“Just did.” Plus, I really didn’t want to go home. Plus-plus, I really didn’t want to say so out loud.

He relaxed and grinned at me and I felt like one of us should say something like, _This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship_ , as we walked back into the main part of the coffee shop, hands full of white kitchen towels and spray bottles of industrial cleaners to start washing down the place. I ended up hosing down the same black non-slip mats that my bare ass rested on not too long before.

At three in the morning, we finally saw the back of that place. The door was locked and the alarm was set and I was still a good block away from my car when Danny called out to me, “Are you okay to drive home?”

As soon as he said it, the day caught up to me and I realized that I was bone tired and about as beat as I could be. “Why?”

“I live right up here. C’mon…I mean, if you want to.”

I followed him past an apartment complex and five more houses and then through a gate to a wooden house hidden from the street. His place was old, with peeling wood slats and single-paned picture windows. In the moonlight, it could have been any shade from light blue to beige to dirty white to pink. There was a trellis in front of it that was covered in white jasmine flowers that I could smell from four feet away.

We climbed a lopsided, rickety flight of stairs to his front door and when we went inside, the temperature was cooler and crisper than on the outside. It smelled like an antique store or, perhaps my Grandma Olga’s washroom, full of sun-dried clothes and wooden pins and washing powder made with Borax. The furniture that was there (there wasn’t much of it) was older than either of my parents.

But it felt like a home.

Danny pointed out the rooms as we walked by them — the kitchen, the main room, the bathroom. When we got to his bedroom, he leaned his back against the painted wooden door and swung it open with the weight of his body. His bed was just big enough for two and it was covered dark sheets made of t-shirt material.

We both stripped down to our underwear and slipped under the covers to sleep on our respective sides, away from each other, as if we had drawn a line down the middle and had sworn not to cross it.

I woke once, several hours later, when the sky had changed from black to deep orange. Danny was curled up against my back with his nose pressed into my shoulder. As I wondered about what had happened to make him think that it was love, and not the absence of it, that messed him up, I drifted off to sleep for the second time. I didn’t wake up again until he did, which was late the next morning, twenty minutes from when he needed to get back to work.

He was on his way to take a shower and I was steps away from leaving his front door when he shouted after me, “Hey. You’ll still come in next Saturday, right?”

“Only if you promise not to poison me.”

“Ha. Okay. I promise.”

I floated down the street, down the hill and over the pedestrian bridge to where my car was parked and reminded myself to remind myself that he didn’t ask me out on a date.


	2. Chapter 2

This was the third Saturday that Danny and I had been definitively _not_ seeing each other. He’s just figured out that I only ordered the double shot mocha with whipped cream, extra chocolate, and a twist of orange when my frequent buyer card had already been punched out on every spot except that last one that read _Free_. All the other times, I either ordered regular coffee (Hazelnut, Sumatra, or Italian Blend) with at least a quarter of the cup reserved for half-n-half plus two packets of raw sugar — or, when it was really late at night, a pot of tea. Well, all the other times except for that once, which I didn’t actually pay for so it shouldn’t count.

But it totally did.

Count.

I just ordered my eighth drink on this card, which meant that I should have received an empty mug to serve myself from one of the carafes at the sugar station behind me. This time, Danny motioned to the machine behind him which had a fresh coffee in mid-brew and he told me that he’d bring it to me when it was done.

It was exactly the sort of thing that people who weren’t seeing each other did. Right? It was also the sort of thing that made my heart go loopy, which also made it difficult to sort out the what-he-does bits from the what-he-says bits. Either way, it is a lot nicer to him than to think about what I really, really need to think about: emancipation from my parents and the eighteen point checklist of things needed in order to gain it.

The career counselor at school helped me print out two copies of the paperwork after she had also given me a bunch of stuff about college and financial aid and early graduation. The page about finances was already rumpled and grubby along the side where I held it. No matter how much I looked at it or wished it to be different, the requirements didn’t change or become any more possible.

There was also the flyer about parental consent which explained how I was supposed to go before a judge to officially say why my life was better off without my parents. They could just show up, say no, and all of that would have been for nothing.

This was a stupid idea anyway.

I flattened the petition pages and placed them at the back of my spiral notebook. Then I pulled out all the scraggly strips that were stuck between the wire loops and found the next clean new page to use for my math homework.

On the top of that page, I wrote the numbers that went with this problem set where they now sat like a nonsensical title: Ch. 5:1-3,7,8,15,16,22,25,33*. These corresponded to a chapter titled _Using Fundamental Identities_ and it discussed at length the critical identities that I would need to learn with urgency if I were to make it through the class: _sin u, cos u, tan u, csc u, sec u, cot u,_ _luv u, mis u,_ and _fuk u._ Next to the table that listed out these definitions was a text box next all about how Pythagoras was about so much more than that triangle. The thing that stood out most was this quote that read:

_Reason is immortal, all else is mortal._

Next to it was a drawing of a kidney bean with big eyes and stick arms and a crown with a caption that said, _He also said beans have a soul_. Below that was another note — this time in purple — that says _Dude, you’re a-dork-able._

This was one of the newer books so the person that drew this must have been someone in the year before me or possibly the year before that. I wondered if I knew them or if they knew me or if they also took this class in the beginning of summer or if we were somehow connected for sake of our fingers having touched the same pages of the same book.

From out of nowhere, a ginormous concoction of whipped cream and chocolate drizzle appeared near my hand. Seriously, it was the king of all drinks. I looked up to see Danny turn the seat across from me sideways and he sat with his back against the wall and looked toward the door with hands wrapped around a plain black coffee. That was the drink I had ordered.

“This is insane, Danny! You aren’t going to get in trouble, are you?”

He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other and kept his eyes on me as he took a sip of his steaming brew. “Nah. Officially, you bought me a drink and I used mine for you. Totally kosher.”

See? There it was again. Heart. Loopy.

First, it was in this bowl so large that when I put my hands around it, my fingers couldn’t touch each other. Then the swirl of whipped cream was almost as high as the bowl was deep. Finally, the drizzle went all over the sides of the rim so that I would have chocolate with every sip. As soon as I could figure out how to drink it anyway.

I picked up the spoon from the inadequately sized saucer, ran it around the side of the bowl to scoop up the chocolate-tinged cream that threatened to overflow, and ladled it into my mouth, closing my eyes to get the full experience of this sweet, sugary stuff that was only slightly denser than air.

The cream they served here wasn’t the kind from the grocery stores; it was the kind that came out of a metal dispenser that turned the liquid into fluff by forcing nitrous oxide through it.That lesson was brought to us from last year’s science teacher Miss Cassidy who, if the rumors were to be believed, was summarily disciplined for inadvertently advising students how to get their next nitrous fix from their next Amazon shipment.

As if there was anyone left that didn’t already know.

“This is so good, Danny. Thank you.”

He gave me a secret kind of grin that was a little bit coy and a lot sexy. Then he looked at my book and grimaced. “Shit. You’re one of those smart ones”

“More like summer school has been my long-term guardian”

“Still, man — I could never do that.”

“I bet you could. But why would you want to?”

“Ha. I guess. What are you going to do with it?”

“Get a good grade?”

“Okay,” he teased, “Then what? What are you going to do after you graduate?”

“College, I guess. I don’t know which one but this is supposed to be the big year.”

“College? You mean you’re not…” His jaw dropped and then he pulled it to the side, which screwed up his face. Then he squinted and tilted his head. I had said something that he didn’t comprehend. Or couldn’t. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen. How old did you think I was?”

His shoulders tensed up and got noticeably closer to his ears. “Older.” His voice was a good octave higher than his normal one. “I…” He stopped. His mouth dropped open and then it shut and then he leaned over and tried again but this time, he was covert as he whispered, “When you said you were a junior, I didn’t know you meant high school.”

The floor threatened to crumble out from under me. “I wasn’t trying to mislead you or anything. I mean my books are all marked with the name of my school.”

And they were. The top, bottom and side of every single one of my books were stamped with “Property of” and then five letters of my high school made in big bold block letters with a red marker. It was pretty obvious.

“I didn’t know. But that’s cool,” he lied.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Oh. That’s not bad, right? I mean, is it a problem?”

“Not really,” he murmured but the look on his face said something else.

“But?” Please don’t let there be a _but_. Of course, there was going to be a _but_. There had to be a _but_. It was like a law or something. However, just in case it is only a theory and not a law, please don’t let there be a _but_.

He pressed the side of his thumb against his frown and considered me for what seemed like the rest of his break time before he confessed, “I guess it explains a few things.”

“What do you mean?”

Danny put the half-empty mug on the table, crossed his arms and looked toward the counter and the door where there was no one in line. “You live at home, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Look. It’s not really my business…”

“What? Just ask me whatever you want to ask.”

Worst case scenario: I leave and don’t come back. Not a problem. To be honest, I was pretty much always ready to do that. It would really suck this time if I had to.

“Is the reason you stay out so late the same reason you have those?” He touched a long scratch on my forearm that was surrounded by green and purple splotches. I didn’t know my sleeve had crept up. I yanked it down and held the cotton firm with my fingers at the base of my palm.

“It’s nothing.” My voice came out thick and muted.

This was not what was supposed to go down tonight. And really, I thought that since he had only seen me in _that_ way was at his place, in the dark, there wouldn’t have been anything for him to notice.

Danny pressed, “Yeah, okay. But those didn’t come from that fighting thing you do either. Am I right?”

I didn’t say anything as I felt that I needed my safe space, the one I could get to if I burrowed toward that deep and quiet place inside me.

“Micah…I’m not going to do anything you don’t want. Okay?” He leaned in again and quietly insisted, “I get it. Don’t go disappearing on me. Come back, man.”

The big lump in my throat spread into my chest.

I knew how it went with these things. Once someone knew, they had to report it. Once it was reported, the law got involved. Once the law got involved, they were in your business and they stayed there. The problem was, they were already involved and I was trying to work things out and none of the options as they currently existed were going to work out for me. I was, strangely, already in the best situation that I could be in so that I was lined up to do the thing I wanted to do and desperately didn’t want anything else to come into play that would upset this delicate balance.

My attention focused a dot of oil that traveled along a swirly path on the top surface of the mocha. It was barely visible inside the whipped cream cavern I carved out. I continued to slurp on successive spoonfuls of my drink before I made my appeal, “You can’t say anything, Danny.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise!” I demanded quietly. Finally, I made eye contact with him again and I noticed that he looked at me in _that_ way. The feeling sorry for me way. The one that was nowhere near as good as the flirty _that_ way that he had given me up until fifteen minutes ago.

“I promise, Micah. I won’t,” Danny said. He meant it, I could tell. He sat there for a while and rubbed his index finger against my thumb, which was still clipped tightly to the end of my shirt.

“It’s not that bad, you know. I can handle it.”

“Okay.”

“Do you still want me to stay?” The _tonight_ part was implied.

“Yeah.”

Danny left my table when a pair of tall, skinny girls with matching lanky blond hair came in and stood at the counter.

This week had been record levels of shitty. The one thing it had going for it was seeing Danny tonight and I thought — I dunno — maybe I’d just fucked it up? I tried to get school work done but it was pretty hopeless. In the end, I just read and took notes and didn’t remember any of it.

The coffee shop was quieter than usual tonight.

Danny kept coming over to see how I was -- like I was his baby duckling that needed his care. I wasn’t going to turn it down or anything, but it wasn’t exactly what I had been going for either.

Around ten o’clock, he got bored, which is something that apparently didn’t come naturally to him. He convinced me to take a study break and keep him company. I learned how to steam milk and how to pack and pull espresso shots.

Then we started making up drinks and had the few people that had been hanging around for a while vote on them: hazelnut syrup + chocolate (awesome), mint (terrible), caramel + banana + almond (so good), peach (barf), blackberry (needs something). Finally, we tried something I remembered from a movie: espresso over ice cream (winner-winner-chicken-dinner).

When his shift finally ended, I helped him, just like I had done for the past few weeks. I was getting the hang of this; he didn’t have to tell me what to do so much anymore. It was almost like clockwork. Danny locked the door and pocketed the keys and he took my hand, like he didn’t ever have the question about not doing it, and walked side by side with me toward his house.

It was starting to feel familiar — how we walked through the umbrella of jasmine and how our boots caused the wood to echo through his main room and how it felt like I might have belonged there a little.

When we got to his room, he turned on the lamp. It made the room glow in a deep amber.Danny nudged the hem of my shirt upwards and requested, “I want to see.”

I froze. “What? That’s not…why?”

“Because, Micah. Secrets suck.” I have no idea why those four words made me trust him with this but they did. I raised my arms and he pulled my shirt over my head. While he examined my damage, I straightened my hair by the reflection in the window. Aside from the scratch on my arm, there was one across the swell of my chest and another that grazed the side of my rib cage. I was dotted with smaller bruises, mostly on my back. His fingers skated across the small rough scabs of the scratch on my chest and he asked, “Can I take the make-up off, too?”

God, I didn’t even know that he could see it.

I swallowed and I nodded and I watched him leave the room. He quickly returned with a few bottles and a long pack of flat cotton pads. He saturated a few of them with something viscous and dabbed at all the places I thought I had so carefully concealed. Then he removed that debris with something stringent and tingly that stung in the places where my skin had been broken. Finally, he used his fingers to smooth on generous layers of Vitamin E oil over the places with the worst damage.

“What made these marks?” He asked at the same time that he used the side of his palm to wipe across one eye and then the other. “I can’t tell.”

I feel so stupid saying it out loud. It was a thing so innocuous that no one would believe me. I didn’t think I said what it was out loud but Danny had already started to reply. “Wait,” he said, “This was done with a tube of lipstick?”

I puffed out a breath and gave him a half-hearted smile, “Yeah. It had a sharp end, like on a diagonal. It’s dumb, right?”

“More like horrible.” His eyes glittered, more serious than I’ve ever seen him. He kissed the green splodges around each scratch in a way that was more than about making it all better. It was his way of saying that if there was any side to take, he would take mine.

The next morning, he woke me up when he sat straight up in bed and moved to a crossed legged position and faced me. He looked determined. He had something he had to get off his chest and nothing was going to stop him.

“Micah,” he said, “what’s stopping you from running away from home?”

I showed him my packet of emancipation paperwork and pointed out the stuff I had and the stuff I didn’t and the stuff I wasn’t likely to get, especially since, with the way things worked, it was all under control of my parents. Plus, I needed to have already moved out and I needed to make more to pay for rent and…

“Come on. I’m going to show you something.”

I followed him down the hall to a door that I had assumed was just a coat closet. But it wasn’t a coat closet. It was a small bedroom with a twin-sized bed and a four-drawer dresser. “This was my room for a long time. After my gramps died, I inherited this place and moved into the bigger room.”

He just left that there. Just flat out, oh my god, _did he just offer what I think he did_?

“Maybe we could work out an official rent thing?”

I thought of where I lived now. Of the bedroom that lacked a door after I’d lost the privilege of privacy. Of the scars along the walls that were, for some reason, bigger than the scars I carried with me. I would be so happy if I never had to go there again. I could live in a place that I wasn’t scared to come home to.

I would miss my brother.

But I would see him at school and I knew he would understand.

It could work.

It might work.

The thing that was so impossible yesterday was all of a sudden possible. I was flooded with ideas of people I needed to speak with. Ones who might vouch for me. Ones who could help me with documents or wouldn’t mind reviewing this packet to make sure the judge would approve it.

“Danny, are you sure?”

“Totally.”

“But…why would you do this? I mean, it’s kind of a big thing you’re offering and we don’t really know each other that well.”

His face crumpled and he couldn’t get the thought out. But he didn’t have to. Not really. I didn’t need to know exactly who or exactly when or exactly how to know that he knew someone at a sometime that was in something like my position and, at that time, he couldn’t have done anything to change what had actually happened.

The room got brighter after the sun hopped the window frame from the south. There was a picture of Danny with a girl on the dresser. He tried to look tough and her eyes didn’t smile, though they were both, of course, deeply beautiful. “I should tell you about my sister some time,” he mourned, still teary and warm from the sweat that comes with the hard fight against emotions that are bound and determined to come out no matter how much you don’t want them to.

At that moment, I knew we would have an even exchange. Not for the rent, mind you. We’d figure that out. That wasn’t what this was about anyway. It was more like what could I give him that meant as much to him as my freedom meant to me.

It was so clear and it was so obvious that there was no option but to say yes. I knew it was impossible to re-write history. I knew that there was something permanent that had happened that no matter what neither of us would be able to change. And yet, I knew that he needed to see for himself that if he had the chance to do things differently, he would.

So that was it then.

I was going to give him a do-over.


	3. Chapter 3

The judge was older than dirt and about as friendly. He had jowls like a bulldog, glasses like Benjamin Franklin, and he had these tufts of hair looked like they would float away from his head the same way that the white things from a dandelion would. The folder in front of him was open and he shuffled through the pages and photos once, and then once again, before flipping through the petition which I had attached with metal fasteners.

It took me over an hour to finally choose the reddish-brown folder made of thick, shiny cardboard that resembled oiled leather and had pre-folded seams along the bottom to allow for getting thickness exactly right according to the size of the stack of pages meant to go inside of it. The clerk had come over no less than three times to check on me and finally recommended that one for making the best possible impression at court.

_Mestre Lagarto_ was sitting in the first row of benches behind and to the right of me. He was sitting next to my career counselor from school, Miss Ruiz, and my boss from the community center, Kenny Walker. On the other side was my mom, my dad, my Grandma Rebecca and my stepmom Laura. They came into the courtroom together in order to contest my application for emancipation.

I knew what it meant when the showed up. It meant that the judge was supposed to deny my application.

Just in case they did (and I figured they would), I included a petition for a Writ of Mandate as an attachment in my packet of paperwork. It sat behind the letters of reference from my school, my work, my landlord (who had to work today), and an adult who has known me personally for over two years. I saw the judge look over the Probate Court Investigation Report again, which I had seen since I got a copy. They had included (at my request) an earlier report made by Social Services.

I remained standing at the podium in front of the judge’s bench. My legs were vibrating and I could feel drops of sweat forming where my mustache would grow if I didn’t shave every day. I hoped he wasn’t the type to get off on the smell of fear. The judge had asked me several more questions and then it relaxed once again into silence as he flipped through the file. He picked up the pen and signed a page. Then he picked out another page and signed that one, too.

He motioned for the bailiff to come pick up the signed pages — who then handed them to the clerk — and finally addressed me, “Mr. Swaeler, your Declaration for Emancipation is approved. And, since this motion was contested by your parents, I have also approved your Writ of Mandate petition. Collect these from the clerk and make sure they are filed on the first floor before you leave the building.”

My mouth went completely dry. It was like I heard what he said but I couldn’t believe it and I looked around the room at my parents, pale and unhappy, and my people, who were already getting up to congratulate me. The judge spoke again, this time, he appeared thousands of times nicer than thirty seconds before, “Oh, and do let me know how you get on Micah. I want to know that I’ve made the right decision.”

I stuttered, “Yes, sir.”

I had minimal recollection of what happened after that.I knew the _mestre_ shook my hand and then pulled me into a seriously hard hug. I think my boss did the same. I knew my grandmother was offended and said one or two things that I really wished no one else had heard just as I knew dad and Laura whisked her out of the building right after that. I knew I stood in line to complete the filing and I knew my school counselor stayed with me until that was done. Finally, I knew that mom stayed and waited and stood in front of me, even while the career counselor was at my side and listening to her. She told me that she was sorry for everything and that she hoped, with time, we could be a family again.

When she left, Miss Ruiz asked me, “Are you still up for finishing our work today?” She had a paper bag in her hand. Inside the bag were five completed college applications for spring admission, each waiting only for registered copies of proof of emancipation in order to be sealed and mailed. My hands were shaking so bad that I could only manage to seal up one while Miss Ruiz did the other four. After that, she walked next door with me to the post office where, for the second time that day, she waited in line next to me. She stayed and waited and watched and stood right next to me until all five of those envelopes got postmarked and carried around the corner to get processed.

It was done.

I did it.

I didn’t do it alone but I did it. Fortunately, I jolted out of my daze long enough to give Miss Ruiz heartfelt thanks and an enormous hug for her enormous help.

“This right here, Micah, is why I do this job. Watching you win this thing. Knowing I could help you and make a difference. Now it’s up to you to pick this up and run with it. I know you won’t let me down, kid.”

I felt like she was still with me even when I saw her walking across the street and down the block. I carried that feeling for the whole night and all the next day.

It wasn’t just from her, either. It was all my people.

Not that night but the night after that, Danny took me out for a surprise celebration. It involved dressing up in vinyl shorts, yellow rubber gloves, and fishnet stockings, all of which were supplied by him. It also involved a dramatic presentation of my very own set of inch-long false eyelashes in silver.

He showed me how to put them on and then I did the rest of our make-up.

He was transformed. It was still Danny but it was a Danny I’d never seen before. And he was both excited and totally comfortable to be dressed that way. It was so different from the times at school where the football players borrowed cheerleader costumes and hot pink lipstick and flipped fake blond curls over their shoulders.

I realized that for all the times I’d dressed up on my own, I’d ever seen a guy like me. It was entirely liberating. Almost as much as when the judge signed my paperwork except this time, I had no idea it was coming. I think he knew I was on the verge of losing my cool because he chose that moment and smiled at me knowingly before he asked me if I was ready to go.

“Go?”

“Yeah, sweetie. We’re going.”

“Like outside?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“But like this?”

“Yup.”

And with that, he eased his big trench coat around my shoulders and shoved me out the door, to the street and to his car that took us to a theater I’d never been to.

The theater had an old school marquee and a poster in front that would have been completely black had it not been for the huge set of red lips, of which the bottom one was captured in two, huge white teeth.

The people that milled about were in feather boas, corsets, platform shoes coated in glitter, hot pants, purple wigs, striped tights, plaid shorts, tuxedo jackets, and itsy-bitsy maid outfits. Men and women alike wore bras with no shirt and underpants with no pants.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Danny.”

“I know. It’s a total freak show.”

“They’re like us.”

“No one is like us but they _are_ kindred spirits of sorts.”

“Of sorts?”

“More like all kinds. Weirdos. In a good way.” He changed topics, “You know, we’ve never been to the movies together before? I don’t even know if you like popcorn.”

“I love popcorn. And we’ve never been anywhere together except the coffee shop and the grocery store.”

He stalled. He stopped walking long enough that the space between us and the people in front of us got noticeably larger.

I stammered, all of a sudden scared that I messed things up, “I-I-I didn’t mean anything by it.”

He was thoughtful and scooped up my hand in his, “No, sweetie. I didn’t think you did. But you’re right.”

We got popcorn (one, large, salt and butter, loads of napkins) and a soda (one, large, half coke, half cherry-coke), and found two seats on the furthest of the two aisles (apparently there is dancing later).

Danny’s gaze was far off, his eyebrows were knitted, his legs were crossed so that his foot from hifar legeg was playing with my calf that was closest to him. He shifted his weight to his hip closest to mine and he turned and blinked a few times rapidly. He looked confused and a little bit lost when he asked, “You remember when I said that I didn’t do the whole romantic thing?”

“Yeah, of course I remember.”

“Are we doing it? Like, does this feel romantic to you?”

“It can be if you want it to.”

“No, no, no,” he said it so casually, it sounded like he was blowing off what I had just told him even though it was hard for me to say that much since I knew how he felt about love and romance. “I’m not talking about what I want or don’t want or what you want or … what I want to know is…well, I mean, beyond either of our desires or intentions. Is this thing between us feeling romantic to you? Because I seriously haven’t ever done this before.”

I was floored. First because I didn’t think this was a possibility. Second because I didn’t think he would bring it up. And, third because I didn’t ever imagine that if it _did_ happen, it wouldn’t have happened in semi-public with each of us wearing bright yellow gloves that most people would only wear in order to wash their dishes. He was still waiting for my answer to his question: _did this thing that was happening between us feel romantic?_ “Ummmm…yeah?”

The left side of his lips quirked up and his head tilted and his right eyebrow arched. “Well, what you know what then?” He grabbed a few kernels of popcorn, popped them in his mouth and chewed and looked at me expectantly.

“No, what?”

He took another handful of popcorn and grinned a big, toothy grin. “You’re my first.”

“No!”

“Yeah, totally.”

“I’m…what…popping your romance cherry?”

He rolled his eyes, threw his head back, and groaned, “Oh my god, Micah. You’ve popped my romance cherry.”

“I didn’t know that. What did we use for protection?”

“Shut up or I’ll make you another trick coffee. You _loved_ the last one,” he said, looking pleased with himself. He stuffed my mouth with popcorn just in time for the lights to dim.

There were no previews. Just a black screen with a pair of bright red, disembodied lips that appeared on screen that grew until they were all we saw. The mouth opened with a song about Michael someone being ill and the earth standing still. This prompted people around us to sing along, word for word. And they drowned out the original soundtrack, not at all perturbed by the close up of the interaction between the big pink tongue with the irregular ridges of that massive set of teeth.

It was half-past two in the morning, which was close to the time we usually got home after Danny’s Saturday night shift. Our bodies automatically walked more quietly through the back garden and up the stairs with the scent of jasmine providing an implausible but additional cover. I always felt more settled when the tumblers of this door give way to one of our keys.

Once inside, shoes were removed and placed by the door, gloves were tucked in a basket under the kitchen sink, trench coats were hung by the door, and we retired to the back of the house to strip away all of the layers of the day that we had earlier put on in order to declare to the world who we were in that moment.

I attempted to peel away my silvery eyelash like I had seen it done in a movie just when Danny held his arm out to try to stop me. He actually chirped the word, “No.” Though it was emphatic and the next word came out within his normal register. “Micah, these are put on with glue. You’re going to pull your damn lid off. Lemme help.”

Out came the swabs and pads, along with bottles of make-up removers, cream cleansers, astringent, and moisturizer. He soaked one of the swabs with that oily liquid he used on me before and cooed, “Close your eyes.” I leaned against the countertop with my back facing the bathroom mirror and felt soft, warm puffs of air against my eye and cheek while he delicately ran the cotton along the rim of my eye and eased the silver lash away from my real one.

“How do you know how to do this stuff?”

“A friend of mine is a drag queen at a place just up the hill. When he wants to practice a new look, he’ll do it on me so that he doesn’t rub his skin raw. Stop blinking. I don’t want this to get in your eye.”

I took a deep breath and willed my eye to stay shut but without squinting until he removed the second lash. Instead of stopping, he continued to remove the make-up from the rest of my face. The strokes he used on my skin were tender. Where I would have scrubbed my face clean using force and vigor, he used a soft caress, the pads and swabs just barely skating over the surface of my face.

Soon, I was thoroughly polished and found myself mesmerized when he performed the same ritual on himself. It never would have occurred to me to be so careful, so considered with myself.

“What?” He demanded, his voice skipping lightly over the single syllable. I didn’t say anything. I just kept watching as he screwed all the tops on the bottles again, wiped them down, and put them back in the basket to go under the sink where they lived. I eyed a bottle of almond oil that we hadn’t used. I picked it up with my thumb and forefinger and declared, “I wanna do something for you.”

“Um. ‘Kay.”

Of course, it was obvious what I wanted to do. We undressed. I pulled back the covers and he stretched out on the bed. When I put my hands on him, I wanted him to feel how many times and how many ways he’s saved me.

Take this shoulder, for example. As the muscles between his shoulder blades and up toward his neck bubbled with released tension under my gliding hand, I want him to feel the difference from where I was to where I am just because he went with his instinct to take me in.

Or these hands. When I grip the length of each finger and stretch and pluck away the stress that has built up since who knows when, I want him to receive back something from all the times he’s taken care of me.

And this leg. I want him to remember how I felt the first time I saw it, upright and in high contrast to what I now know is his favorite color — kelly green.

When he turned over and I got my hands on his chest, I want him to feel how differently I breathe. It was such a simple thing but it was so hard to do before.

Our eyes met and there was a thing that passed between us that made me feel like I was diving into him. It drew me up so that I hovered over him, so that our hands were entwined, so that the next time we kissed, it was almost like we didn’t have skin that separated us.

Like most people, I had heard the difference about how fucking is supposed to be different from having sex is supposed to be different than humping is supposed to be different from making love. It was a topic of discussion that impressed me mostly because it turned something so wondrous into something that sounded so pedantic.

But now I got why people felt the need to try to pin the feeling down with a word. Because this was a moment that transcended any sort of closeness that I had felt with anybody ever. And if I could have found exactly the right word for what this was, I would tell it to myself over and over so that I would remember what this felt like.


End file.
